If you’ve read my blog for a while, you know I’m not big on writing rules… unless they are backed by evidence. I’m a science-brained person. If you tell me all writers should do X, please show me some stats.

I’m going to steal an example from myself: I while back I blogged about how so many experts say, “You must join a writing group.” In my post, I asked why. I didn’t say writing groups weren’t good for some people; I merely wanted evidence that being in a writing group increases my chances of publication or makes me a better writer. Because if it doesn’t, why must I join one? Statements aren’t proof of themselves.

Ok. In the world of science, it’s standard practice to back up statements with hard data. Since the goals of writers vary so much, and “better” isn’t a concrete measurement, let’s expand the…

During my last post, ShannonAThompson.com hit 11,000 followers! Thank you to everyone who follows and supports me–as well as many other readers, writers, and dreamers.

Dont’ forget you can still enter this giveaway to win a signed paperback of Minutes Before Sunset.

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As many of you know, I am a young-adult author. I keep you updated on this adventure on a regular basis. But I’m also a Social Media Marketing Manager (or Wizard!) for AEC Stellar Publishing, Inc. And I don’t really update everyone on this equally as interesting adventure–so today, I wanted to share two virtual parties I’ve been working on that you can attend and win prizes like a Kindle Paperwhite, Amazon gift cards, Starbucks gift cards, signed paperbacks, blog spotlights, and more! Check them out: (you attend them online, so no worries about traveling. You can stay in your pajamas in bed if you like!)

November…

Brevity Craft Editor Julie Riddle is interviewed on the Georgia Review blog about the influence of growing up in a remote, wild landscape, about exploring childhood trauma on the page, and about revision. Here is an excerpt but we highly recommend the full interview here:

Silence fueled the writing I began doing in graduate school, at age thirty-six: I had an extensive internal storehouse of information, memories, and sensations to draw from and explore. But the pervasive silence from my childhood also made writing about the past uncomfortable at best and frightening at worst. I was—and am—acutely aware that I was breaking unspoken family rules and community codes. And there’s a thick veil of silence around sexual abuse. I did not talk about it, except to my therapist when I began counseling in my early twenties, and in occasional generalities with my husband. Up until graduate school I had…

Selfie – “a photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one that is taken with a smart phone by stretching ones arm to the limit and then trying to press the camera button, the photo (that you will forever regret taking) is then uploaded to a social media website” – has been named word of the year by Oxford Dictionaries editors, after the frequency of its usage increased by 17,000% over the past 12 months.

Purely in the aid of research, I did a quick search on Google images for ‘selfie’ and I was astonished, amazed and even gobsmacked at the number of women who took selfies of themselves in their bra and knickers.

Not to be outdone I have decided that Mrs Sensible and I should  post our very own selfie. After searching through the selfies that Mrs Sensible and I have taken over the years, I have…

By Sarah Macdonald, Kent State University, Ohio

My work delves into the lives of nineteenth century working women; not for their aesthetic accomplishments, which are few in the traditional sense, but to open the doors of acceptance to how material circumstances color the form and content of life writing. My goal is not to just acknowledge the variations, but to show how scholarship’s attachment to the bourgeois Cartesian understanding of the self has identified these women as lacking in substantial ways. The very thought of authorial intent is denied them. My work challenges the limited scope of successful life writing. The specific focus this challenge takes is in identifying the motivation for sharing their life stories. Asserting personal relationships, attaining fame, promoting their political affiliation, and healing from traumatic experiences are just a few of the areas explored. It is through this analysis of motivation that a clear appreciation the…